Thursday, June 28, 2018

Too Many Favorite Movies

by Patrick Bromley
Maybe I have a problem.

I've just finished watching RoboCop for 20th or 30th time and have come to terms with the fact that it's one of my favorite movies. This came as something of a surprise to me, because while I have always known that I love RoboCop, I don't think I've carried it on my list of "favorites." But I also know myself well enough to know that my list is indefinite and open-ended, with new movies joining and other movies falling off the older I get, the more I see. I didn't used to consider RoboCop one of my favorite movies. Now I do. Maybe I won't 10 years from now. I secretly think I will.

But what does that mean, "favorite movies?" Obviously we know what it means -- the movies we like more than the other movies -- but how does a movie cross over from being a movie we love to one we call a favorite? Is there only a certain number we're allowed to include on that list? Less than a year ago, Rob DiCristino grappled with this very question: must we have a finite number of favorite movies? I'm a born list maker, as are many of us who love the stuff we love; obsessive behavior lends itself to the desire to catalog, I guess. But does the need to turn things into lists close us off to new possibilities?
One of my favorite podcasts (and one that has come up many, many times here) is Pure Cinema, hosted by friends of the site Brian Saur and Elric Kane. Their show is all about making lists, but they never pretend these lists are definitive -- they're not the "Top 5" anything, just five examples of a specific category that the guys want to talk about. Both hosts have sometimes been teased by guests or on social media for referring to too many movies as "favorites." As I've said before, this is one of the things I love best about their show. Passion and enthusiasm are my two favorite qualities in a movie fan, and both hosts exemplify those qualities on every episode. I'm not interested in exclusivity or snobbery, and loving more movies is preferable to loving only a select few. (Do not confuse this sentiment with me endorsing the idea that everyone should love everything; I still believe in discernment and in having reasons for loving stuff.) Every time they talk about something being a favorite, it makes me happy. I love when people form such strong connections with the art form that I love. That's the whole reason this site is here in the first place.

I guess the thinking is that describing too many things as "favorite" dilutes the meaning of the word. I get it and I don't. Yes, the word has a literal definition. And while I'm a big believer in the meanings of words -- I literally die when someone misuses them -- I must come to terms with the fact that I'm much looser when it comes to the word "favorite." To me, it's describing a movie you love so much that you can't imagine living without it. I have a lot of those, and I'm guessing most of you do, too. I think it's a good thing. If someone loves to read, it brings me joy to hear them talk about all the different authors and books they love. If someone loves food, it brings me joy to hear them talk about all of their favorite dishes. Why wouldn't it bring me joy to hear someone get excited about a whole bunch of movies instead of just a few?
We've done lists of favorites before on here and we've done shows on our "Five Favorite Movies," so I know I've been guilty of making finite lists in the past. I still stand by the five movies I chose to talk about several years ago, but I'd be lying if I said those were my only favorites. Maybe the need for these classifications exists so that we have an answer prepared when asked, and we are always asked. When someone finds out you love something, the first thing they want to know is which one of those things you love most, whether it's baseball teams or bands or stand-up comics or whatever. "You like movies? So, what's your favorite movie?" I'm not passing judgment on anyone who asks the question. It's a polite way of making conversation and taking an interest. It's just that I don't know if we would really settle on one favorite if we didn't think we had to be ready to respond to that particular question.

So, sure, I have the movie I name as being my favorite above all others, but that doesn't mean I don't have more favorite movies. Maybe it's a problem that my list is too big. I can't imagine that it is, because ultimately none of this even matters to anyone but myself. I separate these extra special movies out in my own mind, but it's not as though I'm keeping a physical list that requires constant maintenance or even being asked what my favorites are. It's my own personal inventory of my own personal relationship to these movies. When I realize that RoboCop is one of my favorite movies ever, it's not as though it's something I have to announce...except in this case, of course, when it inspired me to think my way through it out loud. Sorry about that, everyone.

Thank you for your cooperation.

21 comments:

  1. I've made a favorites list or two in my time, and titles such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Pulp Fiction have usually been the top contenders. And while I love those movies, lately I've come to realize that it's ok to include movies like Major League, Halloween III and The Golden Child on the list too. The first ones I mentioned are undoubtedly the better movies, but the latter ones are higher on my list of favorites, and I don't care who knows it.

    Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent from the column, but it just came out.

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  2. I could never label one movie as my true favorite. I'd have at least a handful of films that would be in that area. When I joined Letterboxd I was happy to see that they have 4 slots for your favorite movies rather than just picking one. I can do 4, but I guess I can't pick one favorite.

    Its not very often that I call any movie a masterpiece. I wouldn't give many films a 5/5 or a 10/10 and the ones I do aren't always the films that are considered all time greats, but I would say that I could label about 50 films as "one of my favorites" or maybe more.

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  3. i do have a 3 or 4 favorite movies that have stayed there a for a long time. i could never pick one over the other though. but i also have a thousand movies that would fit in my top 10. luckily my friends sucks about movies and i'm never asked what are my choices.

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  4. I enjoy having favorite movies, honestly. I would say that Do the Right Thing, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Hoop Dreams, The Empire Strikes Back, Ghostbusters, Toy Story, and probably Animal House are my favorites. Some of those sound pretty lame and predictable as favorite films, but I happen to love all of them.

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  5. I am 100% sure of my top 3 favorite movies, and at the very least confident about what are my top twenty. I feel like they are the definition of who I am. My favorite movies are a roadmap to who I am as a person, and it's EXTREMELY important that I know what they are. I consider my list of my favorite movies as being 10,000 times more important than remembering my social security number. According to my icheckmovies tally, I've seen 7,295 movies, and I've marked 437 of those as being my favorites. I do keep a physical list, and by my qualifiers, those movies included on it have been chosen because they either speak to my own personal set of values, or because they exemplify what I objectively think is great about movies. I don't have kids, I don't go to church, and if I didn't have my list of favorite movies, I wouldn't exist.

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  6. I have one movie Ill always pick as my absolute favorite and the best movie in the world, Once Upon a Time in the West.
    But after that one it all depend on my mood. I really like Anchorman, and its definitely one of my favorites, the same goes for Zoolander.

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  7. Who are we if we do not let what we love change us? The alternatives are either to remain static, or to let what we despise change us. Sadly, both of those alternatives are really easy and both suck.

    So I say: have as many favorites as you can stuff into your favorites hole. Love the daylights out of what you love -- lean into loving it. As you change, your favorites may change, and new favorites may muscle their way in and change you some more. Then that changed person can pick some more new favorites!

    I have a MOST favorite movie (BLADE RUNNER) that I love so much I'm writing a book of poems about it. It's been fantastic fun just favoriting the shit out of it, and I haven't grown tired of it one bit, and it keeps changing me, keeps bringing me joy. To paraphrase Ally Sheedy and Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club... why is that movie being so nice to me? Because I'm letting it.

    To me it doesn't cheapen things to have more than one favorite. Art doesn't care that you love other art. Movies don't care that I love poems and I lots of favorites of both. RoboCop is great, and knowing that it's one of Patrick's favorites makes me appreciate it even more. (Side note: I once wrote a poem about RoboCop! It was the 2014 RoboCop, though, which is not good -- but I still like the poem.)

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  8. Great piece, Patrick. It's something I've wondered about in the past as well. Some time last year I thought it'd be fun to make a Letterboxd list of my favorite movies, thinking I'd be able to weed out the *absolute* favorites. I had to stop myself once I hit 100 and to this day I think, "Man I've gotta add *this* movie to that list..."

    I love that you bring up that everyone wants to ask what your favorite is. At work the other day my boss and I got to talking about Star Wars. Before I could start answering some of his questions he said, "But first you need to tell me what your favorite Star Wars movie is," as a way to justify or contextualize anything I said after that point. I'm guilty of doing this as well, but I do find it fascinating that we feel the need to know someone's favorites in order to understand where they're coming from.

    Also, I literally died laughing at your "literally" joke buried in this piece. Great job, sir.

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  9. I consider my favorite movie to be the movie that changed my perception of movies. The movie that made me realize movies weren't just a beginning, conflict and resolution. That a movie could have style. That a movie could play with expectations. A movie that you could find little nuggets upon multiple viewings. And finally a movie that made me want to make movies. Of course I speak of Pulp Fiction. Now I have many favorites like Oldboy, Eternal Sunshine, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kidd, but I'll always have my absolute favorite.

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  10. I also have 3 favorites and then it gets tricky. Like, Blow Out is usually one I'll say is in my top five, but here's the thing, I like Body Double, Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, Femme Fatale and Dressed to Kill just as much, so are they also in to 5? I can't just say every De Palma movie is my fourth favorite movie.

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  11. Also, Patrick, is After Hours one of your favorites? I'd love to hear a show on that, or maybe a Scorsese show in general!

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    1. Seconded. After Hours fascinates me.

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    2. I like After Hours, but it's not a movie I would consider a 'favorite.' I used the pic in honor of Pure Cinema because they're both huge fans.

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  12. I could never compile a top 10 even when I would do it by genre. There are just too many movies that I love for so many different reasons. I think you are in good company Patrick in having a plethora of favorites.

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  13. Awhile ago someone tweeted out "what are the five movies that would tell a new person about you" or something like that. Now when someone asks my favorite movie I direct the conversation to that instead. I think it's better as an ice breaker and conversation starter, and then I don't have to actually pick favorites since like everyone else I have too many to list.

    As far as having too many favorites, art that actually brings joy is such a wonderful thing there's no reason to be previous with favorites. Your favorites are your favorites, whether it's one or one hundred.

    Loved the article!

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  14. Interesting article. I do personally have a top 5 that I feel pretty strongly about. Some are movies like Die Hard that I can really throw on any time and enjoy. But in there is also There Will Be Blood, a movie I REALLY need to be in the mood for, but love it because of how challenging I find it.

    A few years ago, I decided I would try to put together a top 100. Not because I felt it was a useful exercise, but because it was Saturday and a blizzard outside. The first 10 were easy (which obviously includes Robocop, what took you so long?), the next 20 or so also pretty easy, even if I knew the order was rather arbitrary (how does Fargo stack up against Blade Runner really?). It was probably once I started getting into the mid-30s that it started shifting from movies that I would consider an irrevocable part of my personality, like the Terminator, to movies that I just really love, like Mad Max: Fury Road. So....about 35, I guess?

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  15. I think forcing yourself to come up with something like your 5 favorites is a fun exercise that really gets you to dig deep on an emotional level and think about what it is you're responding to that makes you love them so much.

    That said, yeah, have as many favorites as you want. I know a lot of us here have seen a ton of movies and I don't even want to try to estimate how many movies Patrick has seen in his life. If someone has watched 30,000 movies in their life and they consider 200 of them their favorite movies, that's still a fairly small percent.

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  16. All I know is that the older I get the less ashamed I am to admit The Lost Boys is not just a guilty pleasure but something I love unironically.

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  17. What interests me is that when I was new to this site I didn't really understand what you guys meant when you wrote "I loved it when I saw it, but by the next week I had cooled on it". I was like whaaaat? Now, though, I totally get it. Coming out of the theater I thought I would describe Wonder Woman as one of my favorites, but a week later I was more like "eh, that one scene was really great". I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri almost every night for a month and I still wouldn't say it's one of my favorite-favorites. It just didn't stick in my heart as deeply I think. I watched Buffalo 66 once and instantly I KNEW it was ALWAYS going to be one of my favorites, because it couldn't move, it was too important, I need to keep it really close to me. It's also the only new-ish "favorite-favorite" I've added in like 15 years.

    Some movies, I need their memories gathered around me in my head all the time.

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    1. I think I wish I wasn't LOOKING for favorites. I think that doesn't help.

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